2007-06-10

It may have something to do with that odd tradition they have in the USA of completely shutting down all decent television programs for a block of about four months in the summer and the result that my DVR is being seriously under-used at the moment, but I'm really getting into the latest series of the new Doctor Who.

I've been an unabashed fan boy of Doctor Who since I was small enough to effectively hide behind our rather brown, early-eighties sofa in Edinburgh watching Tom Baker, Peter Davison, Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy do their turns as the Gallifreyan time lord. I'm pretty sure it was the seed of my life long addiction to science fiction books and so-called telefantasy TV shows.

I don't know what changed in the third series. Certainly, the Doctor has a new companion in the form of Martha Jones (played with wonderful enthusiasm by Freema Agyeman). But the episodes in series three seem to be consistently better than the previous two series. The episodes have that creeping, mysterious fun and fear in exactly the combination that was common in the golden days of the old Doctor Who.

Take this week's Blink for instance. Statues. Terrifying, monstrous, looming, weeping angel statues that "kill" people by sending them back in time.

In common with one of my other favorite episodes with the new Doctor, Love & Monsters, this episode doesn't actually feature the Doctor and his companion much at all (they're stuck in 1969, having been transported there by the statues while the TARDIS remains in the present day). Thanks in great part to the fine acting of guest actress Carey Mulligan as Sally Sparrow, the episode remains riveting (not to mention sofa-hidingly scary. I actually yelled out in fear at one point, which isn't something I'm taken to do on a regular basis).

2007-06-04

Just a little test entry. I just took the plunge and upgraded my Macromedia Studio 8 to Adobe Creative Suite 3, so I'm testing out Adobe Contribute (which was completely dysfunctional in its previous incarnation with blogger).

Seems pretty nice so far. Rather scarily, I'm sort of editing this blog entry in-place (or at least, that's the intent of the UI illusion it creates). Quite nifty.

Notice that there's no spell checking though, which is definitely a step down from regular blog posting via an HTML form with Firefox. Boo.